Friday, January 15, 2010

Identity and fandom

When I think to my life, I can say that I was not a fan of any one, But certainly I was a fan of some forms of being, some ways that let me experience an ideal understanding of myself within them. Yes, I can say that I am a fan of poetry. But, what is poetry? The answer changed from my sixth up to now and for sure it will change in future as well. There were people that I liked them because of my understanding of their existence, always there was someone who seemed to be a concrete instant of my understanding of the ideal. But knowing the changing essence of the answer, I could not be a fan of him/she. I was 16 when the religions collapsed in me and I found out that I can experience poetry in practice rather than ideas and concepts. I tried to meet many poets in my life, almost the bests in my definition of that time. I looked at many fans, I was not a fan. The poets knew, therefore they trusted me more than their fans. I was 19 when I learned the ways of online publishing. I started to publish my favorite poets online. Later on I became a manager of many websites for poets; poets of different ages, different countries.
Their fans were writing love letters. They were asking for meetings, to touch more of their private life. It was a matter of touch, a kind of erotic passion to something you love. I could understand them, they would like to touch themselves, but they were projecting themselves to an image, a beautiful, powerful image of themselves. Nichita Stanescu, a Romanian poet says:” poetry is not a tear/it is the weeping itself/the weeping of an uninvented eye/the tear of the eye/of the one who must be beautiful”. He defines poetry with a philosophical agony, uninventedness and a lost identity which is the beauty as an ideal. I could see the erotic passion of people to a beautiful invention of themselves in someone else; Someone that brings the possibility of inventing this kind of beauty, the possibility that exists in their gesture as a dear unknown, in their adventurous life. Therefore, fans were living in a sphere of impossibility. They loved their impossibility which became possible in someone else. The poets were totally different from the images of the fans. I could see that I was not a fan because I liked my own possibilities. I liked to make the impossibilities to be possible for me and by me; not through someone else, not by imagination, but as something real; touchable.
I started online publishing of my own poetry, translations, essays and notes from ten years ago. Now, I have my own fans. They write letters, love letters. Every time I am facing with these questions: "Who am I when you are calling me and who are you?"Yes, I wrote about an ideal understanding of yourself in the beginning; But this is not a fixed ideal; it is not a utopia. It is just a changing horizon as for Husserl. I am looking for myself, and my fans are looking for me. It seems we are going to the same direction, to a destiny that could be possible by me as an instant, a concrete existence of a changing ideal. But it is so simplifying answer. My fans are looking for themselves through me. But why me? I put the name of my website as "A name for Nobody". I wrote that I am nobody. I am looking for something to name me. For me, it is poetry that could name me, somewhere, sometime, but not now. The fans are looking for their own names, But I am not the one who could name them, who could call them with their own names. And this is why we are united by an alias name and we are far from a true name...

1 comment:

  1. I remember hearing a friend sayting that to have a romantic relationship with others is actually having a relationship with your own fantasy.It sounds a little bit absurd to me at first however i begin to understand what it really means. Actually people always undestand the world in their own way. There's no way the other people can control what you really think inside your mind. Like you said, when you really love someone's poem,you just love the way you understand it. You participate in that poem the minute you read.So it's hard to say who is the fan.Your fans just want you to be the person in their fantasy however they may get disappointed because you are not them. I actually seldom use the term "fan of sb" because I don't think I'm pious enough.I like the word "appreciate" better. We can appreciate a lot of things and people and learn from them, gaining joy from them.But it's irresponsible to live our life and fantasy over them.

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